235 comments on Caterham CT01 images revealed early

out of the ‘bottom field’ teams lotus/caterham have always been my favourite. their 1st car was a bit of a Bathtub but last years was one of the best looking on the grid.. an now. i cant even begin to put into words how ugly the front end of this car is BUT.. if its what it takes to get them into the mid-field then GO CATERHAM!! ..even if you are a little bit ugly

totally agree with you.. maybe they coluld have sloped the nose more..? instead of such a drop..?
i think its just those red bull style banks or whatever you want to call them that make it stand out so much..

Looking at those pictures, it seems to make the regulation to make noses safer by lowering them useless. I say this because the nose is so sharp now that it could possibly pierce another cars monocoque or alternatively a crash barrier/tyre barrier.

The noses are designed to act as buffer zone’s when they hit anything solid, while the sides of the cockpit are designed to resist objects from entering in a sideways impact @karl, making such a scenario highly ulikely.

It’s not exactly going to win any beauty contests, but there have been some uglier designs in F1 before… those crazy BMW Sauber F1.06 vertical winglets, the Williams FW26 “Walrus” and let’s not forget the “coffee table” and “tea tray” designs of the late ’70s and early ’80s.

The real shocker is that it looks like the nose was drawn by an Etch-a-Sketch instead of the 3D CAD software package which was actually used…

I like the back end of it. Looks like a mini RB7, though with the same engine and gearbox it seems logical to use the same philosophy for the rear bodywork.
Oh and the font. It looks quite good actually. Very sharp and fast.
No really it doesn’t.
It looks like this: http://www.kcvs.ca/martin/phys/phys241/images/truck_vs_car_crash.jpg
The Caterham apparently just stopped a bit faster then the Seat, but other then that its exactly the same.

I usually like the new designs and approaches year on year in Formula 1. Like in 2009, a lot of people thought that the new designs were ugly, but I loved them.

This, however, I’m not sure I could grow to love that. Although, at the same time, I do like it when different teams have different designs. For example, the skinny-nosed RB5 compared to the Brawn, and the 2011 McLaren sidepods. So I hope some teams have gone for some innovative new designs :D

And just to add to that, I thought the 2010 (Lotus as it was then) wasn’t very good looking, as it was quite boxy. The 2011 one, however, was very sleek and the first pictures I saw of that were fantastic.

But it seems that this years is worse than the 2010 car (from the front at least). I at least hope it’s quick.